The Risk of the Amoral Corporation
Or, to post or not to post on LinkedIn
amoral: having no moral standards, restraints, or principles; unaware of or indifferent to questions of right or wrong – dictionary.com
Bayer is a company that was started in 1863 by Frederick Bayer and Friedrich Weskoff, two men in the industrial dye business. Industrial dye is used to color the leather in shoes, belts, and handbags, as well as the interiors of automobiles and floor carpeting. It’s also used in cosmetics for hair coloring, nail polish, and makeup. Industrial dye makes Mountain Dew green and maraschino cherries red. It touches just about every manufacturing process on the planet. It’s big business.
In 1899, Bayer expanded beyond industrial dye and chemical processing into pharmaceuticals. It created acetylsalicylic acid, which it trademarked under the name Aspirin. Today, Aspirin is one of the most commonly used drugs worldwide.
In 1925, Bayer joined five other German companies to merge into a single conglomerate, IG Farben. IG Farben made everything from polyurethane to photographic film to fertilizer to drugs. The merger made IG Farben the largest chemical and pharmaceutical company in the world. Three of its scientists – Carl Bosch, Friedrich Bergius, and Gerhard Domag – would go on to receive a Nobel Prize.
IG Farben had considerable influence in German politics, contributing to center and left-leaning groups during the 1920s. The conglomerate then became a donor to the Nazi Party when it came to power in 1933.
To secure massive, lucrative government contracts worth billions in today’s currency, the corporation not only made substantial financial contributions to the party but also willingly adhered to the party's racial exclusion policies. By 1938, the company had fired all its Jewish employees, from senior managers to low-level workers.
During WWII, IG Farben used slave labor from the concentration camps to build the products necessary for the German war effort. IG Farben also used retainer personnel from the SS to conduct medical experiments on humans from the concentration camps. The retainers injected prisoners with diseases such as tuberculosis and diphtheria to test drugs the company had under development. IG Farben also owned a stake in Degesch, the company that produced Zyclon B, the gas used during the Final Solution to exterminate millions of concentration camp prisoners.
After the war ended, twenty-four IG Farben executives were tried for war crimes. Of the twenty-four IG Farben executives put on trial at Nuremberg, ten were acquitted. Thirteen were found guilty and sentenced to prison terms ranging from 1.5 to 8 years. The trial of one employee, Max Brueggemann, was discontinued due to illness. Not all of the thirteen employees sentenced to prison served their full terms. By 1951, all were released. Most of those convicted went back to work in high-level corporate managerial positions. For example, Herman Schmitz, CEO of IG Farben from 1935 to 1945, became a board member of Deutsche Bank, and Fritz ter Meer, a supervisory board member during the war, became Chairman of the Board of Bayer AG after the war. (Bayer AG spun off from IG Farben after its breakup and dissolution in the early 1950s.)
IG Farben and its subsidiaries were not the only companies that contributed to the German war effort. Daimler-Benz, which evolved into the present-day automotive manufacturer Mercedes-Benz, produced engines for aircraft, tanks, submarines, and various military vehicles, including trucks and staff cars for the Nazi regime. As with IG Farber, Daimler-Benz relied on slave labor during the war, employing over 60,000 concentration camp prisoners, prisoners of war, and other types of forced laborers in its factories. Auto manufacturers BMW and Volkswagen, as well as the arms manufacturer Krupp, used slave labor, too.
As strange as it might seem, IBM, an American company, also supported the Nazis during WWII. In his book IBM and the Holocaust, author Edwin Black includes a 1942 letter written by Werner Lier, IBM’s European representative. In it, Lier describes the Geneva office as the clearinghouse between European companies doing business with IBM and the main office in New York City. Additionally, IBM’s European subsidiaries leased IBM equipment to German businesses throughout the war. According to Black, IBM’s European subsidiary, Hollerith, had an on-site office serving customers in almost every German concentration camp.
Yet, for all the atrocities committed by these companies during WWII, they still exist today in some form, and those who ran the companies suffered no more than the length of a prison term typically given to criminals who commit armed robbery. Rather than being removed from the face of the earth as punishment for their contribution to wartime atrocities, these companies continue to prosper. Bayer still makes Aspirin, and Mercedes-Benz and BMW automobiles have become status symbols. The memory of their atrocities has been erased from the commercial mind.
Such is the way of the world. As history demonstrates, companies that make money and increase shareholder value survive. If that means complying with the politics of the moment, so be it.
Which brings me to LinkedIn.
To post or not to post
One thing I’ve learned during my fifteen-plus years on LinkedIn is that it's best to write posts only about business matters. People have complained in the one or two instances when I’ve done otherwise. Given my expertise, this means writing about technology. So, I have. After all, LinkedIn is a business site.
But that was then, and this is now.
One of my interests during the last few years has been researching the histories of various corporations and their executives. What I have learned is that most of the companies I’ve researched and many of those I’ve worked for are amoral. Their concerns are more about making a profit and increasing shareholder value than doing good or avoiding evil. I understand; it's in their nature.
I’ve accepted the amoral nature of corporations and have chosen to do my political writing on other venues. I’ve kept my politics off the pages of LinkedIn. As long as businesses kept their political involvement in the back rooms of government, I was willing to play along. But times have changed. Something new has emerged. Today, a corporate executive and his minions have been given direct authority over how parts of the United States government work while simultaneously running his corporations to their benefit.
Yes, businessmen have been in power in the US Government before, exemplified by former General Motors CEO Charles Erwin Wilson and former Ford President Robert McNamara, Secretaries of Defense under Eisenhower and Kennedy, respectively. But, in the past, the executives at least had the decency to resign from their corporate positions and then serve as government officials only. Today, we have Elon Musk, who is emblematic of the continuing fusion in the United States of government and corporations. Musk is a CEO who retains power in various companies while also being an employee with considerable power at the top echelons of the US government. This is well beyond an obvious conflict of interest. This is well beyond right or wrong. This is amoral behavior at its finest.
So, as the line between business and government continues to erode and the republic evolves further into a corporate state, I will be making more political posts on LinkedIn. I wish I didn’t have to. But I want my grandchildren to remember that I did something when faced with the outrageous, even when it might hurt my income and whatever standing I have in the business world. My moral compass dictates that I do. Otherwise, I fear I will be no better than those at IG Farben, who remained silent and prospered while so many others fell victim to the actions of the amoral corporation.
Author’s correction: The name of the company IG Farben was misspelled as IG Farber previously.
I no longer own TSLA shares directly, but have been paralyzed by the quandry of needing Starlink and not wanting to support Elon's quest for world domination.